0:15 well um it really is an honor to be here
0:18 such a beautiful venue and and uh to be
0:20 following the other horsemen it's it
0:22 really is it's great to be
0:24 here now I'm going to speak tonight
0:27 about the delusion of Free
0:29 Will and to my surprise this is an
0:31 incred incredibly sensitive subject it's
0:33 perhaps the most sensitive subject I
0:36 have had the U the honor to
0:39 touch U it's sensitive to religious
0:42 people of course because without Free
0:46 Will Judaism Christianity Islam don't
0:57 thing but the existence of Free Will is
0:59 actually a a very sensitive topic for
1:02 atheists as well because it seems to
1:05 touch everything human beings care about
1:06 it seems to touch everything in fact
1:10 that makes us distinctly human morality
1:13 and law and politics and religion and
1:16 intimate relationships feelings of
1:19 personal accomplishment feelings of
1:21 guilt and
1:24 responsibility it see it seems that most
1:26 of what we care about in human life
1:29 depends upon our being able to view
1:31 other people like ourselves as being the
1:34 the actual conscious source of their
1:40 actions so in this talk I I hope to do
1:43 two things I hope to convince you that
1:45 Free Will is an
1:47 illusion and I hope to convince you also
1:51 that that this matters and that's a uh
1:53 those are quite
1:55 distinct and I want to
2:00 begin I hope on not too defensive a note
2:02 by telling you the two ways the two most
2:04 common ways of misunderstanding my
2:06 argument and this is sort of like
2:09 beginning a marriage proposal by saying
2:10 here are the two most common reasons
2:13 women haven't wanted to marry
2:22 wrong now the first way of missing the
2:24 point is to think that we we simply
2:27 don't understand enough science is
2:29 incomplete some of our scientific assumptions
2:30 assumptions
2:33 may be false there may be truths to
2:35 discover about the the nature of the
2:37 universe that would put free will the
2:40 popular notion of free will on some new
2:42 footing so it's it's simply too soon to
2:46 say scientifically that Free Will is an
2:49 illusion th this is not true this is I
2:52 am arguing that Free Will as a concept
2:55 is is so incoherent that it can't be
3:02 the the the second detour you might be
3:05 tempted to take as many have is to say
3:08 well of course the popular notion of
3:10 Free Will doesn't make any sense it
3:11 doesn't fit the facts
3:13 facts
3:16 but n none of that matters that's an
3:20 academic argument we still feel free
3:21 this changes nothing it's sort of like saying
3:23 saying
3:25 that that
3:28 uh atoms are mostly empty space you know
3:30 this is this is not empty space we can
3:33 use nothing about our life changes you
3:35 know everything is mostly empty space
3:36 but I still can't fit into an old pair of
3:42 pants many people agree that Free Will
3:44 doesn't make any sense and that it's
3:46 some kind of Illusion but they think
3:49 that nothing important changes and and
3:52 that also on my view is
3:55 untrue imagine you're taking a nap in
3:58 the the Botanical Garden next door I
4:00 don't know if that's legal or not but
4:05 just imagine you do it and you you are
4:07 awakened by an unfamiliar sound and you
4:09 open your eyes and you see a large
4:12 crocodile about to seize your face in its
4:18 jaws stranger things have probably
4:21 happened it should be easy enough to see
4:22 that you have a
4:25 problem okay
4:29 and now swap the crocodile for a man
4:30 whole holding an
4:33 axe the problem changes in some
4:35 interesting ways but the the sudden
4:37 emergence of Free Will in the brain of
4:39 your attacker is not one of
4:42 them but imagine the difference between
4:44 these two experiences let's say you
4:45 survive your
4:48 ordeal and you you have a it's a
4:49 terrifying experience let's say you're
4:51 injured let's say you lose a
4:55 hand now imagine confronting your human
4:58 attacker on the witness stand during his trial
4:59 trial
5:01 okay if you're like most people you are
5:04 going to feel feelings of
5:08 hatred that could be so intense as to as
5:10 to constitute a further trauma you might
5:13 you might spend years of your life
5:16 fantasizing about this person's
5:18 death how much time are you going to
5:21 spend hating the
5:24 crocodile you might even go to the zoo
5:26 to to to take take your friends and
5:28 family to the zoo for fun just to look
5:30 at them you say that that is the Beast
5:31 that almost killed
5:33 me Al you might be pointing with with this
5:42 hand which which state of mind would you rather
5:44 rather
5:48 have now I I think this this idea of
5:50 Free Will largely accounts for the
5:51 difference the crocodile was just being a
5:52 a
5:55 crocodile what else was a crocodile
5:57 going to do coming upon you napping in the
5:58 the
6:02 park but this idea that that the human
6:03 had Free Will and could have done
6:06 otherwise and should have done
6:09 otherwise has very different
6:11 consequences now most people imagine
6:13 that a belief in Free Will is necessary
6:16 for Morality morality has to be grounded
6:18 in this idea and it's necessary
6:20 therefore for getting most of what we
6:23 want out of
6:25 life and I think that's clearly untrue
6:28 we I the the difference between
6:30 happiness and suffering uffing exists
6:33 with or without Free Will I I no more
6:36 want to be eaten by a crocodile than I
6:38 want to be killed by a man with an ax
6:41 these are both very good things to
6:44 avoid and we can and we can avoid them
6:47 and we can talk about almost everything
6:50 else we want in life without suffering
6:51 any obvious Illusions about the origins
6:56 behavior now the the popular conception
7:00 of Free Will seems to rest on two
7:02 assumptions okay the first is that each
7:05 of us was free to think and act
7:08 differently than we did in the past you
7:12 you chose a but you could have chosen B
7:13 you became a policeman but you could
7:15 have become a
7:18 firefighter you ordered chocolate or you
7:20 you but you could have ordered vanilla
7:24 it certainly seems to most of us this is
7:26 the world we're living
7:30 in now the the second assumption
7:34 is that you are the conscious source of
7:38 your thoughts and actions you're you you
7:40 feel that you want to move and then you
7:43 move your conscious desires and
7:45 intentions and thoughts that proceed
7:49 your actions seem to be their true
7:53 origin the conscious part of you that is
7:56 experiencing your inner life is actually
7:59 the author of your inner life and
8:01 yourself subsequent Behavior now
8:02 unfortunately we know that both of these
8:04 assumptions are
8:07 false the first problem is that we live
8:10 in a world of cause and
8:14 effect every thing that could possibly
8:17 constitute your will is either the
8:20 product of a long chain of Prior
8:22 causes and you're not responsible for
8:25 them or it's the product of
8:27 Randomness and you're not responsible
8:30 for that obviously or it's some
8:32 combination of the two and however you
8:36 turn this dial between the iron law of
8:38 determinism and mere
8:45 sense what does it mean to say that a
8:48 person acted of his own free
8:52 will okay it must mean that he could have
8:53 have
8:56 consciously done
8:58 otherwise not based on random influences
9:00 over which he had no no control but
9:02 because he as the the conscious author
9:04 of his thoughts and
9:06 actions could have thought and acted in
9:08 other ways now the problem is that no
9:11 one has ever described a way in which
9:13 mental and physical events could arise
9:16 that make sense of this
9:19 claim consider you're a generic murderer
9:22 okay his his choice to commit his last
9:26 murder was preceded by a long series of
9:29 Prior causes a certain pattern of
9:32 Electro chemical activity in his
9:34 brain which was the product of Prior
9:37 causes some combination of bad genes and
9:39 the the developmental effects of an unhappy
9:41 unhappy
9:43 childhood whatever influences were
9:45 impinging upon him the day he committed
9:48 his crime the moment we catch sight of
9:52 this stream of causes that that that
9:54 precede any conscious experience and
9:57 reach back into childhood and Beyond or
10:03 world the sense of his culpability
10:05 disappears that the place where we would
10:09 place our blame
10:11 disappears to say that he would he could
10:12 have done
10:15 otherwise is really to
10:17 say he would have been in a different
10:19 Universe had he been in a different
10:21 universe or that he would have been a
10:24 different person had he been a different
10:27 person now and as disturbing as I might
10:30 find such a person's Behavior here I
10:32 have to admit that if I would if I were
10:35 to trade places with him Adam for Adam I
10:37 would be
10:39 him and I would I would behave exactly
10:42 as he did and for the same reasons there
10:45 there's no extra part of me that could
10:53 people I even if you believe that every
10:55 human being Harbors an immortal Soul
10:57 this this problem of responsibility
11:00 remains I cannot take credit for the
11:03 fact that I don't have the soul of a
11:06 psychopath if I had truly been in this
11:08 person's shoes if I had an identical
11:10 brain or or an identical soul in an
11:13 identical State I would have behaved
11:15 exactly as he
11:19 did so so the role of luck in our lives appears
11:20 appears
11:24 decisive one has to be very unlucky to
11:27 have the mind and brain or soul of a psychopath
11:29 psychopath
11:32 but the moral significance of luck is
11:34 very difficult to admit it seems to
11:38 completely destabilize us it's a we seem
11:41 not to know how to think about evil in this
11:42 this
11:46 context and yet in in specific cases we
11:47 have already changed our view of evil
11:50 whenever whenever we see the cause of
11:51 someone's behavior when we see for
11:54 instance that a a murderer had a brain
11:57 tumor and the brain tumor was in just
11:59 such a place in the brain so as to to
12:02 explain his violent
12:05 impulses that person suddenly becomes a
12:12 biology our moral intuitions shift
12:15 utterly now I'm arguing that a brain
12:20 tumor is just a special case of physical
12:22 events giving rise to thoughts and
12:24 actions if we if we fully
12:27 understood the neurophysiology of any
12:29 murderer's brain
12:31 it would be as exculpatory as finding a
12:33 tumor in
12:36 it if we could see how the wrong genes
12:38 were being relentlessly transcribed if
12:40 we could see how his his early life
12:43 experience had sculpted the micr
12:44 structure of his brain in just such a
12:47 way as to give rise to to Violent
12:51 impulses the the the whole conception of
12:54 placing blame on him would
12:57 erode now of course this is a problem
12:58 that scientists and philosophers are
13:00 aware of and many think they have put
13:03 forward a a notion of free will that can
13:07 that can uh withstand the
13:11 um the facts and I'll deal with some of
13:14 that there appears to be a poltergeist
13:15 in this computer
13:17 computer
13:20 um but I want to I want to argue for a
13:22 moment that the the problem of Free Will
13:25 is actually deeper than the problem of
13:28 cause and effect I mean most people
13:29 think we have this this experience of Free
13:30 Free
13:33 Will and simp we simply we can't map it
13:35 on to physical
13:38 reality I think this is an illusion the
13:40 the the Free Will doesn't even
13:44 correspond to a subjective fact about
13:46 ourselves and if you pay close attention
13:49 to your experience you can see
13:54 this your your thoughts simply appear in
13:57 Consciousness very much like my
14:01 words what what do you going to think
14:04 next what am I going to say
14:07 next I could I could start just
14:10 wondering about why we don't eat
14:14 owls why don't we eat owls they seem perfectly
14:16 perfectly
14:20 good where did that come from well as
14:21 far as you're concerned it came out of
14:24 nowhere right but the same thing happens
14:26 in the privacy of your own
14:34 out you've all made an effort to be here
14:36 tonight presumably because you wanted to
14:39 hear what I had to say about free will
14:42 and you're you're trying to listen to
14:45 me but you have a voice in your head
14:47 that just says
14:55 noticed now I'm standing up here trying
14:57 to reason with
15:00 you and
15:10 [Applause]
15:13 Stiller I was hoping I didn't look that
15:20 still thoughts just emerge in
15:22 Consciousness okay we we are not authoring
15:24 authoring
15:27 them we we can't think them we can't
15:29 choose them before we think them that
15:31 would require that we think them before
15:38 them if you can't control your next
15:40 thought and you don't know what it's
15:42 going to be until it
15:50 will now at this moment some of you are
15:53 thinking what the hell is he talking
15:56 about here's what I'm talking about you
16:00 didn't choose that thought either
16:03 if if you're confused by what I'm saying
16:06 you didn't create that
16:08 state conversely if you if you
16:09 understand what I'm saying and you find
16:11 it interesting you
16:14 didn't create that
16:17 either everything is just
16:20 happening and that includes your
16:22 thoughts and intentions and desires and
16:30 efforts we will come back to that
16:33 point now of course in a sense your
16:37 brain our brains do think our thoughts
16:39 before we think them and they think many
16:41 things that we never hear
16:43 about where we're conscious of only a
16:46 tiny fraction of what goes on in in our
16:48 minds and we we continually notice
16:50 changes in our experience in thoughts
16:53 and intentions and moods and resulting
16:56 Behavior but we are utterly unaware of
16:58 the the neurophysiological changes that
17:00 that produce
17:02 those those those
17:05 changes me consider the sensation of of
17:08 touching your finger to your
17:12 nose okay feel free to try this it seems
17:13 simultaneous it seems like the nose
17:15 touches the finger at the same time the
17:18 finger touches the nose okay and and
17:20 while it may be simultaneous in the in
17:22 the world we know at the level of the
17:24 brain the timing has to be different it
17:27 simply takes longer for the input from
17:30 the fingertip to reach sensory cortex
17:32 than it does from the nose and this is
17:34 true no matter how short your arms or
17:41 nose so the experience of the present
17:44 moment even of the simplest sensation is
17:45 built upon layers of unconscious
17:48 processing that we're not aware of okay
17:52 so so even the Apparently simple
17:55 conscious events are not entirely what
17:58 they seem that the the present moment is
18:00 in some sense already a
18:06 buffered now needless to say this
18:07 unconscious M
18:10 Machinery produces not only our
18:12 perceptions but our thoughts intentions actions
18:14 actions
18:16 decisions and this is where the notion
18:18 of Free Will and moral responsibility
18:20 begin to get
18:21 squeezed now many people have
18:23 demonstrated in a
18:27 lab in many Labs actually that that a
18:29 person's conscious decision
18:33 comes after processes that can be
18:35 detected and there's a there's a time
18:37 lag between the moment you think you've
18:39 decided to do something and the moment
18:40 at which your brain
18:42 decided and this has been proven
18:45 Benjamin leet did this with EEG and this
18:48 has been done with fmri and and actually
18:50 direct recordings from the the the
18:53 cortices of of patients under about to
18:57 undergo surgery we know
18:59 that the even the simplest most
19:01 apparently voluntary decision like the
19:03 decision to move your left hand versus
19:06 your right hand or the decision to to
19:10 push the left button or the right button
19:12 uh when you put people in this Paradigm
19:15 and you have them watch a clock a
19:16 special clock that allows them to
19:19 discriminate just you know very fine
19:22 increments of time and you ask them
19:25 simply to to make the choice to move
19:26 whenever they want to they can move
19:28 their left hand or the right hand just notice
19:29 notice
19:31 when it what time it was on the clock
19:33 when you finally were aware of which
19:35 course you were going to take we know
19:38 that that some moments half a second
19:40 sometimes as much as 5
19:42 seconds before a person is consciously
19:45 aware of what they're going to do we can
19:47 see in the brain what they were
19:50 committed to doing so the the experience of
19:51 of
19:54 deciding is during this period where you
19:56 still feel that you're free to do
19:59 anything you want has already been
20:02 determined by the state of your
20:05 brain so needless to say this time lag
20:07 is very difficult to reconcile with free
20:08 will because in principle it would allow
20:10 someone to predict what you're going to
20:12 do while you still think you're making
20:15 up your mind but the truth is that even
20:18 if there were no time lag even if the
20:21 conscious intention were truly
20:26 simultaneous with the neurophysiological
20:27 underpinnings there would still be no
20:29 room for free will because you still
20:32 wouldn't know why it is you do what you
20:35 do in that
20:37 moment and again you can notice this
20:39 fact about yourself
20:42 directly let's run a little
20:45 experiment think of a film any film it
20:49 doesn't matter a good one a bad
20:51 one and notice what your conscious
20:54 process of selection is like notice
20:57 first that you're you're this is as free
20:58 a decision as you're ever going going to
21:00 get I me you you have all the films in
21:02 the world to choose from and I've simply
21:10 one do everybody have a
21:12 film I'm sorry to say you've all picked
21:15 the wrong film so don't ask me how I
21:17 know that but I
21:20 do do it again pick another film and and
21:22 just be sensitive to what the the
21:29 like do you see any evidence for free will
21:37 there let's let's look for it it first
21:39 if it's not here it's not anywhere so we
21:46 here first let's rule out all of those
21:50 films whose names you don't know and
21:52 which you haven't seen and which you
21:54 couldn't have possibly thought of if
21:56 your life depended on it okay there's no
22:00 freedom in that obviously
22:02 but then there are all these other films
22:04 which you're perfectly aware
22:07 of but which simply didn't come to
22:09 Consciousness you you absolutely know
22:12 that the Wizard of Oz is a film but you
22:14 just didn't think of The Wizard of
22:22 this were you free to
22:25 choose that which did not occur to you to
22:26 to
22:28 choose for for whatever reason reason
22:31 your your Wizard of Oz circuits were not
22:33 primed in such a way as to deliver it as a
22:38 possibility of course if you did think
22:39 of The Wizard of Oz you should consider
22:44 genius okay so you probably thought of several
22:45 several
22:48 films and let's say you thought
22:53 of Lawrence of Arabia and Avatar and Mad
22:55 Max okay so you kind of converged on
22:56 those three and then you thought well
23:00 I'm Australian I'll go with Mad Max and
23:02 then you thought no no M Gibson is more
23:04 than a little creepy at this point in his
23:05 his
23:08 life so I'm going to go with
23:11 Avatar okay and you settled on Avatar
23:15 well well you still don't know why you
23:19 chose Avatar over Lawrence of
23:22 Arabia and and this is the this is the
23:23 sort of decision that motivates the idea
23:25 of free will you go back and forth
23:27 between two options and you're not
23:30 suffering any obvious constraints from
23:32 the external world or any coercion it
23:33 just you appear to be doing all of it
23:40 thoughts but when you look close closely
23:42 this is it is a mystery why you chose
23:44 one over the other and you you might
23:45 have a story to tell about it you might
23:48 say well I saw an animated movie last
23:51 week and Avatar is animated so I I
23:52 remembered that and so I just went with
23:55 Avatar okay the first thing to say is
23:57 that we know that those sorts of
23:59 explanations are almost always wrong
24:01 when you bring people into the lab and manipulate
24:03 manipulate
24:06 their decisions they always have a story
24:08 about why they did what they did and it
24:10 never Bears any relationship to what
24:12 actually influenced them so you you can
24:14 bring people into the lab and and give
24:16 them a hot beverage as opposed to a cold
24:18 one to hold in their hands and get them
24:21 to cooperate more or to like one person
24:22 more than another and they have no idea
24:24 that the the temperature of the cup in
24:26 their hands is influencing them at all
24:29 that psychology is just bursting with
24:31 with evidence of that
24:33 kind but even if you're right in this
24:35 case even if even if the memory of the
24:39 animated film was the thing that steered
24:42 you to Avatar over Lawrence of Arabia
24:44 you still can't explain why it had that
24:45 effect Why didn't it have the opposite
24:47 effect why didn't why didn't you think
24:49 well I I just saw an animated film so
24:50 I'm going to go with something else I'll
24:58 Arabia the the thing to notice about
25:00 this is that that you the conscious
25:03 witness of your inner life isn't making these
25:05 these
25:07 decisions all you can do is witness these
25:13 decisions you you no more picked a film
25:15 in the subjective sense than you would
25:18 have if I picked it for you I I could
25:20 have been saying Star Wars Hannah and
25:24 Her Sisters the these these names were
25:25 just appearing in Consciousness there
25:28 was this first moment where I said pick
25:29 a film
25:31 and nothing had happened then all of a
25:34 sudden the names of films started coming
25:37 to you and you didn't know which they
25:45 appeared so I'm arguing to you that that
25:48 our experience in life is actually
25:49 totally compatible with the truth of
25:53 determinism we don't have this robust
25:55 sense of free will the moment we
25:56 actually pay attention to how thoughts
25:58 and intentions arise
26:01 and again it's important to notice that
26:04 this is true whether or not we have
26:07 Immortal Souls and there's no the case
26:09 I'm building against Free Will does not
26:11 presuppose philosophical materialism I'm
26:13 not the idea that reality is just entirely
26:20 physical no doubt most of reality is
26:23 entirely physical and most of mind is is
26:25 produced by physical changes in our
26:26 brains we know that the brain is a
26:28 physical system that's en IR L beholden
26:31 to the laws of nature but even if we have
26:32 have
26:34 souls that are somehow Loosely
26:36 integrated with the
26:39 brain the unconscious operation of a
26:43 soul grants you no more free will than
26:44 the unconscious neurophysiology of your brain
26:46 brain
26:49 does if you don't know what your soul is
26:52 going to do next you are not in control
26:59 soul and this is rather starkly obvious
27:01 when you think of all of the people who
27:03 do things they wish they hadn't done I
27:06 me think of the the millions of of
27:09 Christians whose Souls just happen to be
27:13 gay but it's true even when you do
27:15 exactly what you wish you had done in
27:17 hindsight the soul that allows you to
27:21 stay on your diet is just as mysterious
27:23 as the soul that tempts you to eat
27:30 okay so I think it's safe to say that no
27:31 one has ever argued for the existence of
27:33 free will because it holds such promise
27:35 as an abstract idea the the the
27:38 endurance of this problem in science and
27:40 philosophy is the result of of this
27:44 feeling that most of us have that we
27:49 freely author our thoughts and
27:51 actions and at the moment the only
27:53 philosophically respectable way to
27:56 defend Free Will is to adopt a view in
27:57 academic philosophy that's called
27:59 compatibilism and argue that that that
28:01 Free Will is compatible with the truth of
28:06 determinism now my my friend Dan dennet
28:08 is a the philosopher is a is a
28:11 compatibilist and he essentially makes the
28:12 the
28:15 claim that we just have to think about
28:18 Free Will differently free if if if a
28:23 murderer commits his crime based on his
28:27 desire to kill and not based on some
28:29 other thing that's high Jack in him but
28:30 his actions are actually an expression
28:33 of his real desires and intentions well
28:36 then that's all the free will you
28:38 need but from both a a moral and
28:41 scientific point of view this seems to
28:43 miss the
28:46 point but where is the freedom in doing
28:47 what one
28:50 wants when one when one's desires are
28:53 the product of Prior
28:56 events that one is completely unaware of
29:02 so from my point of view compatibilism
29:04 is a little like saying a puppet is free
29:10 strings now compatibilists push back
29:14 here they say that that even if our
29:17 desires and thoughts and behavior are
29:20 the product of unconscious causes that
29:22 doesn't matter because you're you're you
29:24 are the totality of what goes on inside
29:27 your brain and body so your your
29:29 unconscious mental mental life is just
29:31 as much
29:33 you and your unconscious neurophysiology
29:36 is just as much you as your conscious
29:38 inner life
29:41 is okay but this to my eyes seems like a
29:44 bait and switch okay this this trades a
29:47 psychological fact this experience we
29:50 have of consciously authoring our
29:53 thoughts and actions for a a general
29:55 conception of ourselves as persons it's
29:58 it's a little like saying you made made
30:01 of Stardust okay which you are but you
30:03 don't feel like
30:05 Stardust and and and the the knowledge
30:07 that you're Stardust is not driving your
30:09 moral intuitions and influ influencing
30:12 our our system of Criminal
30:16 Justice the the fact is that most people
30:20 are identified with a certain channel of
30:23 information in their conscious minds
30:25 they feel that they are in
30:28 control they are the source
30:31 and this is an
30:33 illusion the the you that you take
30:36 yourself to be in this present
30:45 anything so compatib try try to save
30:46 Free Will by by saying you're more than
30:48 this you are the totality of what goes
30:51 on inside your brain and body but you're making
30:53 making
30:55 decisions right now with with organs
30:58 other than your brain
30:59 but you don't feel responsible for these
31:02 decisions are you making red blood cells right
31:03 right
31:06 now your body is doing this hopefully
31:09 but if it if it were to stop you
31:10 wouldn't be responsible for this you
31:19 change so so to say that that you are
31:22 responsible or or or are identical
31:26 to everything that goes on inide your
31:28 brain and body is to make a claim about
31:31 you that bears absolutely no
31:34 relationship to the experience of
31:37 conscious authorship and subjectivity
31:39 that has made free will a problem for
31:49 place so what what does all this all
31:50 mean well first let me tell you what it
31:54 doesn't mean it's it to to talk about
31:58 determinism as a fact is not to
31:59 argue for
32:03 fatalism okay this this confusion on
32:04 this point gives rise to questions like
32:06 well if everything is
32:08 determined why should I do anything why
32:11 not just sit back and see what happens
32:12 why not just throw the ores out of the
32:15 boat and just drift through
32:19 life this this misses the point this is
32:22 not to to sit back and see what happens
32:25 is itself a choice which has its own
32:27 consequences it's also very hard to do
32:30 just you just try to stay in bed all day
32:31 waiting for something to
32:34 happen Okay you you'll soon feel a a
32:36 very strong urge to get up and do
32:38 something and the only way to stay in
32:40 bed at that point will be to resist this
32:43 urge doing nothing actually becomes much
32:44 harder than doing something after a very short
32:51 time so the fact that our choices and
32:55 decisions and efforts depend upon prior
32:59 causes doesn't mean that they're not
33:01 important if I hadn't decided to write a
33:03 book about free will it wouldn't have
33:05 written itself you you can't write a
33:08 book by accident okay so so effort and
33:11 discipline and intention all of this matters
33:19 goals these are all causal states of the
33:22 brain and they lead to behaviors and
33:24 behaviors lead to outcomes in the
33:29 world so the so on one level not much
33:32 changes the the choices we make in life
33:35 are as important as fanciers of Free Will
33:40 imagine and then therefore fatalism is
33:42 untrue that the idea that the future is
33:44 going to be what it's going to be
33:46 regardless of what you think and do that
33:53 untrue but the next thing you
33:54 think and
33:57 do is going to come out of a wilderness
34:01 of Prior causes which you you the
34:03 conscious witness of your inner life cannot
34:04 cannot
34:13 being you have not built your
34:15 mind and in the moments where you seem
34:17 to build it when you make a an effort to
34:19 learn something when you try to perfect a
34:19 a
34:22 skill the only tools at your disposal
34:24 are those that that you've inherited
34:26 from moments
34:29 past no one picks their
34:31 parents or the society into which they were
34:32 were
34:36 born no one picks the moment in history
34:37 where they
34:39 arrive no one determines how their
34:42 nervous system gets shaped from the
34:48 onward so you are no more responsible
34:50 for the the structure of your
34:53 brain as well as its functional States
34:57 as you are for your height
35:00 but I'm not saying that you can just
35:02 blame your parents for every bad thing
35:04 that happens to you and make no effort
35:08 to change yourself this is a a way of
35:10 misunderstanding the argument it is
35:12 possible to change in fact viewing
35:16 yourself as a system open to Myriad
35:18 influences actually makes change seem more
35:19 more
35:22 possible I mean you you are by no means
35:24 condemned to be the person you were
35:26 yesterday in fact you can't be that
35:28 person that the self is not a stable
35:30 entity it it is a
35:33 process but it is a fundamentally mysterious
35:43 process I me none of us know how we
35:46 arrived at this moment in our
35:49 lives there there is actually a mystery
35:50 here in the present moment that doesn't
35:53 get eradicated even though you have a
35:55 story to tell about why you think you
35:58 did something
36:00 we are we are in each moment simply
36:02 discovering what our life
36:05 is now this may sound scary to some of
36:08 you but it actually can be quite free to
36:14 way so our choices
36:17 matter and there are paths toward making
36:19 wiser ones there there's no telling how
36:22 much a a a good conversation could
36:23 change you or how much it might matter
36:26 to you to surround yourself with smart
36:34 but you don't choose to choose what you
36:36 choose in life there's a
36:39 regress that always ends in darkness you
36:42 have to take a first step or a last one
36:46 for reasons that are are bound to remain
36:48 inscrutable and to declare your freedom
36:50 in this
36:53 context is really just a way of saying I
36:55 don't know why I did that but I didn't
36:57 mind doing it and I'd be willing to do
37:02 now I don't mean to belabor the point
37:04 but people have a a really hard time
37:07 understanding this just think of the
37:08 context in which you are going to make
37:14 decision whatever it is a decision of
37:16 any size whether to get married or not
37:19 to go to graduate school or not to eat
37:26 one your brain is making choices based upon
37:29 upon
37:32 beliefs and intentions and states that
37:33 have been hammered into
37:36 it over a
37:39 lifetime your physical development is
37:41 something you had no hand in you didn't
37:42 pick your parents you didn't pick your
37:45 genes you didn't pick any of the
37:48 influences that's that shaped your
37:50 neurophysiology you didn't pick your
37:53 soul if you have
37:57 one and yet this totality of influences
37:59 and states will be the thing that
38:02 produces your next
38:05 decision yeah yes you are free to do
38:07 whatever you want but where do your
38:13 from okay so let's get back to this
38:14 issue that I raised at the beginning of this
38:16 this
38:19 talk it seems that this kind of talk
38:21 begins to
38:24 undermine a sense of of moral order and
38:27 in fact this is the position of the
38:29 Supreme Court of the United States has
38:31 said that Free Will is just a
38:33 non-starter in terms of our our Criminal
38:36 Justice System it is it
38:40 is a universal and persistent assumption
38:41 that's a quote of our criminal justice
38:45 system and determinism is incompatible
38:49 with with the underlying precepts of our
38:51 approach to justice so the idea is
38:53 actually doing work in our
38:56 world the problem is that if we view
38:58 people as neuronal weather patterns it
39:00 seems to undermine a basis for for
39:04 placing blame now I think this is
39:05 actually a false assumption I think we
39:07 can have a a very strong sense of
39:10 morality and an effective criminal
39:11 justice system without lying to
39:14 ourselves about the causes of human
39:18 behavior so what do we condemn most in
39:20 people morally and
39:22 legally it's the conscious intention to
39:24 do harm now why is the conscious
39:28 intention to harm people so BL worthy
39:30 well Consciousness is the context in
39:33 which all of
39:36 our all the qualities of our minds
39:39 seem activated the Consciousness is
39:42 where our beliefs and desires and
39:45 prejudices rub up against one another
39:48 what you do on the on the basis of
39:51 conscious premeditation tends to say the
39:53 most about you and about what you're
39:55 likely to do in the
39:58 future if you decide to kill your
40:01 neighbor after weeks of
40:04 deliberation and Library
40:07 research and debate with your
40:10 friends well then killing your neighbor
40:12 really says a lot about you that really
40:18 are the the point is not that you are
40:20 the sole independent cause of your
40:23 behavior the point is for whatever
40:25 reason you have the mind of a
40:27 murderer okay you're not ultimately
40:29 responsible for the fact that you have
40:32 that mind no more so than a a crocodile
40:34 is responsible for the fact that it has
40:35 a that it's a
40:38 crocodile but a crocodile really is a
40:41 crocodile and it really will eat you
40:43 okay if you see one out on the boardwalk
40:46 tonight it it's worth taking
40:48 seriously you don't have to attribute
40:51 free will to it to take it
40:54 seriously now certain criminals are
40:55 obviously more dangerous than crocodiles
40:58 and we have to lock them up to keep
41:00 everyone else safe now the moral
41:03 justification for this is entirely
41:05 straightforward everyone is better off that
41:07 that
41:11 way but and that still makes sense
41:12 without Free Will what doesn't make
41:15 sense is the motive of Retribution the
41:17 motive of punishing someone because they
41:27 sense we don't P punish
41:30 crocodiles because they deserve
41:33 it in fact that hasn't always been true
41:36 it says in Exodus that if if a o an ox
41:40 Gores a person and kills him or her the
41:43 ox has to be stoned to death and it's
41:45 meat can't be eaten and in fact for
41:48 hundreds of years in medieval Europe
41:52 Christians held trials for animals that harm
41:53 harm
41:55 people these animals were actually
41:58 defended by lawyers
42:00 okay there there were actually there are
42:02 cases of there's a case of I just read
42:05 about of a lawyer who was representing a
42:07 large collection of
42:11 rats that had destroyed a a
42:14 crop and his argument to the magistrate
42:16 was the rats couldn't appear in court
42:18 because there were so many cats about
42:20 that were were going to do them
42:24 Mischief so his client was was
42:26 absent okay this this is this went on
42:29 for 100 of years we we l we've lynched
42:31 there was the latest lynching of an
42:34 animal in the United States was in in
42:38 1916 where an elephant ran a muck out of
42:41 a traveling circus trampled someone in
42:43 the street and the good people of
42:46 Tennessee decided to Lynch it to get
42:48 Justice they they hung an elephant from
42:50 a railroad
42:53 Crane and they were quite satisfied with
42:57 themselves so it's it's you can see that
43:00 I mean that those facts are are maob and
43:02 and and comical now you can see how
43:05 we're prone to illusions on this
43:08 front now I'm not ruling out the
43:10 possibility that certain punishments may
43:13 be necessary to regulate people's
43:17 behavior it may be that certain crimes
43:21 require punishment in order to be
43:24 deterred but that is that is a a purely
43:26 pragmatic discussion about human
43:29 psychology and and the causal efficacy
43:31 of punishment it has nothing to do with with
43:36 retribution dispensing with the illusion
43:38 of Free Will allows us to focus on
43:39 things that actually matter like
43:42 mitigating harm deterring crime assessing
43:45 assessing
43:47 risk so I'm not arguing that everyone's
43:49 Not Guilty by reason of insanity there
43:51 there are the bad people need to be
43:54 locked up if that's all we can do to
43:58 keep ourselves safe
44:00 and all the distinctions we care about
44:01 the difference between voluntary and
44:04 involuntary action or the or the the the
44:06 moral responsibilities of an adult
44:08 versus those of a child all of those can
44:16 Will in the United States we have
44:20 13-year-olds serving life sentences for
44:22 crimes I don't know if this happens in
44:25 Australia but this happens in the US and
44:27 it's not it it's not based on any kind
44:31 of Saye assessment that these children
44:33 cannot be rehabilitated it is based on
44:37 the sense that they deserve this
44:39 punishment they are the true cause the
44:42 sole cause of their behavior which was so
44:43 so
44:46 heinous that they deserve this as a
44:48 matter of Retribution that doesn't make
44:56 will I me the the thing you you have to
44:59 admit Adit in the final analysis is that
45:01 even the most terrifying
45:05 people are at bottom unlucky to be who they
45:06 they
45:09 are and that has moral
45:12 significance and once again even if you
45:15 think everyone Harbors an eternal Soul
45:17 the game doesn't
45:19 change anyone who has who's been born
45:21 with the soul of a psychopath is profoundly
45:23 profoundly
45:27 unlucky you take one of the most OD
45:28 people I can think
45:33 of Saddam Hussein's eldest son UD
45:36 Hussein he really is somebody who's it's
45:38 almost impossible to feel compassion for
45:42 this man when you think of him as he was
45:44 as a man I mean this was somebody who
45:46 when he would see a a
45:49 wedding in progress in Baghdad would
45:53 descend with his thuggish bodyguards and
45:55 rape the bride sometimes he would rape
45:57 and kill the bride he did this more than
46:00 once so so given that we couldn't
46:02 capture him during the course of that
46:05 war whatever you think about the ethics
46:06 of the
46:09 war it was good that we killed him me
46:11 unless you are a total
46:13 pacifist you have to admit that this is
46:16 what guns are for to shoot people like UD
46:22 Hussein but but simply walk back the
46:25 timeline of his life think of him as a a
46:27 four-year-old boy okay he might have
46:30 been a his psychopathy might have been
46:31 evident even at at the age of four he
46:34 might have been a scary boy but he was
46:37 also a very unlucky boy he he he had
46:40 Saddam Hussein as a
46:43 father how unlucky can you
46:45 get okay he was the he was the
46:47 four-year-old boy who was going to
46:51 become the psychopath UD Hussein through
46:54 no fault of his own ultimately if if at
46:57 any point in his life course
47:00 we could have intervened to help him at
47:02 4: at 5 at 6 at 7 at
47:04 8 that would have been the right thing
47:06 to do and compassion would have been the right
47:08 right
47:12 motive so so the irony is if you want to
47:13 be like
47:16 Jesus and love your enemies or or at
47:19 least not hate them one way into that is to
47:20 to
47:24 view human behavior through the lens of
47:32 causation now I'm not saying that it
47:34 would be easy to adopt this perspective
47:36 if you or someone close to you was the
47:38 victim of a violent crime this is this
47:40 is how we need to see the world in our
47:42 more dispassionate moments but our
47:45 dispassionate moments are the source of
47:49 our thinking about public policy and
47:59 to to see how fully our moral intuitions
48:02 should shift imagine if we had a cure
48:05 for evil imagine that we we understand
48:07 exactly what psychopathy and all its variants
48:09 variants
48:12 are and we can we can make the necessary
48:14 changes in the brain painlessly and
48:17 safely and easily it's just we can just
48:20 drop the Cure into the milk like vitamin
48:24 D okay so now at that point evil is a
48:27 nutritional deficiency
48:30 now imagine the logic the moral logic of
48:33 withholding the cure for evil from
48:37 someone as a punishment for their evil
48:39 acts but would it make any sense at all
48:43 to say now this person was so evil he
48:46 was so bad he caused so much
48:49 harm that he shouldn't be given the
48:53 Cure does that make any sense at all
48:56 that imagine withholding surgery from
48:58 someone who has a brain
49:00 tumor as a
49:04 punishment when you are sure that the
49:06 brain tumor was the cause of their violent
49:13 Behavior to my eye that makes no sense
49:14 at all and that
49:17 reveals that this urge for
49:20 Retribution is actually born of not
49:23 seeing the causes of human behavior when
49:25 you see the causes if we could trace the
49:27 causes in a fine grained
49:30 way this notion of of
49:32 Vengeance and and this notion that
49:35 people deserve what they get in this
49:42 disappear and this leads me finally to
49:43 the subject of religion because of
49:46 course the the notion of God's justice
49:49 is entirely a matter of Retribution
49:53 people deserve what they get
49:55 because based on their own free will
49:57 they are misbehaved I me this is the
49:59 religious answer to the problem of evil
50:01 the only when you say well why did the
50:04 not how did an omnipotent and Omni
50:08 benevolent God allow the Nazis to kill
50:11 millions of people the answer is well
50:13 human beings are endowed with Free Will
50:16 and therefore God couldn't control that
50:19 part now obviously that's not an answer
50:22 to all the other mayem that's born of
50:25 other causes so tsunamis and epidemic
50:28 Disease an omnipotent God seems
50:31 responsible for those things but the the
50:32 religious answer to the problem of human
50:39 Will Free Will is what makes sense of
50:42 the idea of sin that this idea that that
50:44 people can
50:48 consciously as the sole cause of their
50:52 behavior and belief turn away from
50:55 God I must be the sole sufficient cause
51:03 okay this this can't be
51:06 true this is this is a not only can this
51:10 not be true because beliefs are the are
51:12 born of all of these prior
51:15 causes I can't actually be the cause of my
51:17 my
51:19 unbelief it it seems impossible to
51:22 describe a universe in which it could be true
51:31 and however you tune the variables of of
51:33 of determinism and
51:36 Randomness Free Will doesn't put in an
51:38 appearance there's no there's no mix of
51:40 Randomness and determinism that gets you free
51:41 free
51:44 will now ironically one one of the fears
51:47 that religious people have is that this
51:49 way of viewing the world dehumanizes us
51:52 but rather I think it humanizes
51:55 us what could be more dehumanizing than
51:58 to say that that most people throughout
52:01 human history are in some crucial way
52:04 responsible for the fact that they were
52:07 born at the wrong time to the wrong
52:10 parents given the wrong
52:12 beliefs given the wrong religion the
52:14 wrong intellectual influences and as a
52:17 result of that they deserve to be
52:20 punished for
52:23 eternity and that and the god that
52:25 designed this diabolical apparatus is
52:28 somehow still
52:30 good so to conclude I just want to bring
52:33 this back to to the direct experience of
52:35 Consciousness in the present
52:37 moment it's generally argued that that
52:40 Free Will presents us with a compelling
52:42 mystery we have this robust experience
52:45 of freedom and yet we can't figure out
52:47 how to map it on to physical
52:50 reality I'm arguing that's not the case
52:52 I think this is a a a symptom of our
52:55 confusion the the illusion of free will
52:58 on my on my account is itself an
53:09 Will thoughts and intentions simply
53:19 do now some of you might think this sounds
53:20 sounds
53:23 depressing but it's actually in
53:26 incredibly freeing to see life this way
53:29 it it does take something away from Life
53:30 what it takes away from life is an
53:33 egocentric view of
53:37 life now we're not truly separate we are
53:39 linked to one another we are linked to
53:41 the world we are linked to our past and to
53:44 to
53:47 history and what we do actually
53:51 matters because of that linkage because
53:53 of the permeability because of the fact
53:57 that we can't be the true Locus of
54:02 responsibility that's what makes it all
54:06 matter so you can't take credit for your
54:09 talents but it really matters if you use
54:12 them you can't you can't really be
54:14 blamed for your weaknesses and your
54:19 failings but it matters if you correct
54:22 them pride and shame don't make a lot of
54:24 sense in the final
54:27 analysis but they were no fun
54:30 anyway these are these are isolating
54:34 emotions but what what does make sense
54:36 are things like compassion and love try
54:39 caring about well-being makes
54:42 sense trying to maximize your well-being
54:45 and the well-being of others makes
54:48 sense there is still a a a difference
54:51 between suffering and happiness and love
54:54 consists in wanting those we love to be
54:57 happy all of that still make sense
54:59 without Free
55:01 Will and of course nothing that I've
55:04 said makes social and political Freedom
55:07 any less valuable having a gun to your
55:10 head is still a problem worth rectifying
55:13 wherever intentions come from so so so
55:15 the freedom to do what one wants is still
55:22 precious but but the idea that we as
55:25 conscious beings are deeply responsible
55:30 I think needs to be
55:33 revised it just can't be mapped on to
55:37 reality neither objective nor
55:38 subjective and if we're going to be
55:40 guided by
55:43 reality rather than by the fantasy lives
55:44 of our
55:47 ancestors I think our view of ourselves
55:48 needs to
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